Speaker
Dr
Mary Elizabeth Kaiser
(Johns Hopkins University)
Description
ACCESS, Absolute Color Calibration Experiment for Standard Stars, is a
series of rocket-borne sub-orbital missions and ground-based experiments
that will enable improvements in the precision of the astrophysical flux
scale through the transfer of absolute laboratory detector standards from
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to a network of
stellar standards with a calibration accuracy of 1% and a spectral
resolving power of 500 across the 0.35 to 1.7 micron bandpass of the cross
dispersed (m=1-4) echelle spectrograph fed by a 15.5-inch Dall-Kirkham
Cassegrain telescope.
The telescope mirrors have received their flight coatings. Flight
detectors have been selected. The detector subsystem has undergone
vibration testing. Confirmation of initial detector performance and the
detailed ground based characterization of the detector will begin in the
next few weeks.
Fabrication, integration, and automation of the ground-based calibration
subsystem is in progress.
The ACCESS design, calibration strategy, and ground-based integration and
test plans will be presented. Launch is expected within the year.
Nasa sounding rocket grant NNX08AI65G and DOE DE-FG02-07ER41506 support
this work.
Primary author
Dr
Mary Elizabeth Kaiser
(Johns Hopkins University)